Interviews using Poetry. All questions by Aaron Kent. Longlisted for Saboteur Awards 2017.

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Question & Answer 1 – Cooper Wilhelm

The night time but with the moon
as an anchor
plummeting to Earth.
Two sailors and a pack of cigarettes
swigging rum
on the pack of an apostrophe
[read: catastrophe].

A children’s birthday party but the balloons
are made of skulls
and all the candy is buried
sixty
seventy
eighty feet below ground.
Blood-covered hands digging for sugar.

A cinema chain but all the chairs are toenails
and the screen
is made of broken dishes.
The projectionist
tries to screen a film –
The Truman Show –
but it’s not in the script.

What does your world
look like, Cooper?

– Aaron Kent

Answer 1

A lady bug alights at the top of a femor like a first bud of spring.
No one notices one small bird reassuring another small bird
as they perch above a ship’s plump sail.
I feel like I should be human sometimes when all I want
to be is the air passing through my lungs
the way I’ll travel through a train station without getting off the train
watching the doors open and close for nothing.
Boys growing up want to be whatever lightless rock
smashed into the earth and made the moon.
They want to be buckets of protein and chum.
They want to sweat like John Cena.
It’s easiest crying in the park
because the trees shushing you with their leaves
would be doing that anyway
so you can feel less guilty for having feelings.
I’m back in town if you want to get a drink
or just wave back at me at this gas station
not sure who I could be.